I am never the one to hold back on an opinion — after all, I earn my living pontificating, not just on the op-ed page but on the lecture circuit as well. So I’ll tell you up front: Bernie Sanders is my man, the candidate I’ll be casting my vote for in the next general election, should he win his party’s nomination, as all of us hope and pray.
And I’ll tell you another thing up front: I’m a two-issue voter, unlike others who stick to one, concerned both for the right of the middle and working classes to enjoy financial security and social equity in their lives and, half a world away, for the right of the Palestinian people to live independent lives, in their own state, free of predatory encroachment on their land. And if you’ve gathered from this that I’m ideologically a progressive and ethnically a Palestinian, you wouldn’t be far off the mark.
First things first. The sad truth about America’s economy, as became evident after the collapse of 2008, is that when banks made money in spades, the per-centers got rich, but when they lost fortunes, and verged on collapse, taxpayers took on the responsibility of bailing them out, to the tune of trillions of dollars doled out by the Federal Reserve as “economic stimulus.” Yet to date, 80 percent of Americans have not benefited in any way from a much-trumpeted “recovery,” with their incomes still frozen in place.
And trust me on this one, you don’t have to be well-versed in economics, familiar with arcane terms in the discipline like “the co-efficient of cross elasticity,” to know that as a middle- or working-class American today, you’re hurting.
Sanders is the only presidential candidate genuinely calling for reform on that front. While Hillary Clinton is beholden to those very banks for their largesse in funding her campaign, the septuagenarian senator from Vermont, who wants to “stop our billionaire class from owning our politicians,” is paid by the people, roughly around $60 at a time. Were he to occupy the White House, he averred, he would reform the tax code and “make the rich and the corporations pay their fair share.” And he abhors the fact, as do his legions of supporters, that “the top one percent own more than the combined wealth of the bottom 40 percent.”
Additionally — and this is refreshing, not to mention novel, coming from a politician — he speaks not in gobbledygook, but plainly and matter-of-factly, about issues like wealth disparity, student debt, the minimum wage, climate change, the criminal justice system and America’s moral obligation, as a big power, to be fair in executing its foreign policy around the world. You can’t go wrong with a presidential candidate imbued with such lofty ideals.
Which brings us my second issue, that is, how that role, as he sees it, should be played in the Middle East, an issue of paramount significance to me personally as a Palestinian American, Arab American and Muslim American — three equivalent centers of my identity.
To be sure, foreign policy was never an area in which Bernie felt comfortable, or one to which he had paid much attention — that is, till launched his campaign in May last year. But his position on Palestine has always been both clear and even-handed, summed up in his assertion that to be successful in resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, “we have got to be a friend not only to Israel but also to the Palestinian people.” This is in marked contrast to Hillary Clinton who, after Republican front-runner Donald Trump had said that on the question of the Middle East conflict he would set out to be “neutral,” retorted vehemently that “America can’t ever be neutral when it comes to Israel.”
Moreover, Sanders has said that “peace will mean ending what amounts to the occupation of Palestinian territory and pulling back (Israeli colonies) ... the bottom line is that Israel must have the right to exist in peace and security, just as the Palestinians have the right to a homeland in which they alone control their political system and their economy.” All of which, incidentally, has not earned him the admiration of Washington’s hyperactive pro-Israel community.
In fact, Sanders was always ready to tell it like it is. As far back as 1988, for example, when he was the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, he called on the US to “use its influence” and see to it that a “reasonable settlement be found which will guarantee Israeli sovereignty ... but also begin to deal with the rights of Palestinian refugees.”
In 1991, as a senator, he voted — hold on to your hat — in favor of withholding tens of millions of dollars in US aid to Israel unless Israel agreed to stop colonizing Palestinian land in the occupied territories.
And in 2014 — keep holding on to that hat — he was one of only 21 senators (out of a total of 100) who refused to co-sponsor a lop-sided senate resolution that condemned Hamas' role in the 2014 Gaza War, while saying nothing about the massive suffering Israel inflicted on Palestinians in that little strip of land they inhabited.
Sanders is my man, and yes, I feel the Bern. But this 74-year-old Jewish socialist from Brooklyn needs to pull a rabbit or two out of the hat for him to win his party’s nomination — denying the insufferable Clinton her second bid at becoming the first female president — and then go on to win the general election six months from now. Hey, weirder things have happened.
